Philly’s Puppet Arts Movement is Growing

Philadelphia is already known as a physical theater hub in the United States, and now our puppet arts movement is growing. (That’s right, I said puppets.) Imaginative creators like Sebastienne Mundheim, Aaron Cromie and Peter Gaffney are at the forefront of the charge, and last summer, Swarthmore College hosted a six-day national puppet festival. This month, Gaffney debuts Gesualdo, in Heaven, a work about 16th-century Italian murderer-nobleman Carlo Gesualdo, with life-size wooden puppets and live music. Sesame Street this is not.

Gesualdo, in Heaven: February 13 to 22, Pig Iron School, 1417 North 2nd Street. See a trailer below: